and a desire for more professional
independence, she decided the time
was right to strike out on her own as an
independent brand strategist.

Within a few months, Piessens
connected with the Stem, a New York-based “network consultancy” that relies
on a group of nearly 120 independent,
freelance and project consultants—with
an average of 15 years’ experience—
who work with clients on customer
engagement and digital transformation
in the healthcare industry.

Looking ahead at the next 10 years,
experts say, the continuing rise of
independent workers like Piessens,
along with the continuing rise of
automation and artificial intelligence,
will play large parts in shaping the
workforce.

Embracing Agility

Some recent research suggests
that an over whelming majority
of employees in the “traditional”
workplace would appreciate more
of the freedom Piessen and other
independent workers enjoy.

Randstad USA’s Workplace 2025
1.5 Survey, for example, polled 3,168
employees, finding that 92 percent of
respondents feel employers should be
more open to flexible or alternative
employment arrangements. The
survey was conducted as a follow-up
to a late 2015 Randstad USA study, in
which the Atlanta-based firm predicted
that 70 percent of the workforce will be
“agile” by 2025.

Jim Link, chief human resources
officer at Randstad North America,

BY MARK McGRAW Two years ago, Anne Piessens was exhausted and in need of some kind of career change. Having spent five years in management consulting and 13 more as a consultant at marketing agencies, she had “reached a point where I was drained of energy, creativity and enthusiasm.”Piessens had seen a drastic shifttake place in the field to which she haddedicated the bulk of her professionallife, and she didn’t like the directionshe saw recent developments takingthe traditional marketing firms whereshe had cut her teeth.

“The marketing profession has
radically changed in the past decade,
due to a proliferation of marketing
technologies and the advent of big
data,” she says. “Agencies that were
once organized into departments titled
‘strategy,’ ‘account management,’
‘creative’ and ‘production’ are now
scrambling to hire staff with, say,

Experts predict that more independent-minded
workers and the proliferation of technology
will be the biggest factors in shaping the
workplace of tomorrow.

Hubspot campaign expertise or virtual-reality development skills or the abilityto field multivariate surveys.”Clients “know that no one agencycan possibly have all of that nicheexpertise under one roof,” saysPiessens. “Yet, when they ask theiragencies which skills they have in-house, and which skills they outsource,agency executives hem and haw andThe feeling that she was spendingless and less time interacting withcustomers only compounded herdisillusionment.

“What happens in a traditionalagency is that experienced teammembers get pulled into businessdevelopment,” she says. “They spendmore time trying to win new accountsthan doing the existing client work.”As a result, she says, “clients arestuck with junior teams, or with accountexecutives who are spread much toothin. … I realized that I was spendingmore time in internal meetings talkingabout agency processes than on solvingclients’ branding problems. I was nolonger doing what I loved at work, andhad very little time for anything outsideof work, either.”This realization, she says, was thebreaking point. Armed with an M.B.A.,nearly two decades of experience